One central reason Anthony Munoz found an NFL home with the Bengals
The Cincinnati Bengals, in 1980, were still led by Paul Brown, the team’s owner and founder. Before the football legend died in 1991, he was still the lead decision-maker for the organization. To a considerable extent, Brown can be viewed as the main reason the Bengals picked Anthony Munoz with the No. 3 selection in the 1980 NFL draft, a move which changed Munoz’s life and the Bengals’ trajectory as a franchise.
Yet, Brown’s selection of Munoz didn’t happen on an island. Brown made two coaching changes before the 1980 season which smoothed the path for Munoz. One was the hire of offensive line coach Jim McNally. The more central and important of those two changes was the decision to release head coach Homer Rice and hire Forrest Gregg, who had coached the Cleveland Browns for three seasons and had spent 1979 coaching in the CFL with the Toronto Argonauts.
If you don’t know who Forrest Gregg was before he became the coach of the Bengals, here’s the essential, central fact about the man: Gregg was part of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line on the dynastic Vince Lombardi teams of the 1960s. Gregg was as good an offensive lineman as the NFL had seen at the time. He was a legend of the game when the Bengals hired him as head coach, even though he had not registered a top-tier coaching achievement.
Notably, Munoz became the man who enabled Gregg to achieve richly as an NFL coach. It was Munoz who transformed the Bengals into a Super Bowl-caliber team in 1981. Veteran quarterback Ken Anderson needed an elite lineman and pass protector to distribute the ball to elite receivers such as Isaac Curtis and Cris Collinsworth.
The main point to emphasize is that Gregg’s background as an offensive lineman enabled him to see and appreciate the value and importance of picking Munoz.
Watch Munoz tell this and related stories in his one-hour interview with Tim Prangley and Rick Anaya at Trojan Conquest Live. The USC YouTube show airs Sundays at 9 p.m. Eastern and 6 p.m. Pacific this summer.
